BIGGLES WORKS IT OUT

 

by Captain W. E. Johns

 

 

IV.                   THE TRAIL TAKES SHAPE  (Pages 42 – 53)

 

(At the beginning of the chapter is a small pen and ink illustration of a man, presumably Biggles, looking at a piece of paper through a magnifying glass).  “In due course Bertie appeared with the first prints.  They were still wet.  “I think we’ve got something here, old boy,” he said briskly”.  Biggles studies the picture through a magnifying glass and says “Those are certainly wheel tracks”.  They were made by something with three wheels.  Biggles asks to return to the scene of the ambush and his asks Brand to bring one of his “black trackers” along.  Brand takes “his most experienced tracker, a shock-headed, wizened old aboriginal named Joe”.  Biggles says he now knows exactly where to land and by getting Bertie to rev the engines after landing, they are able to blow the loose sand away and expose three parallel lines.  Brand is impressed and he then says “What’s Joe after?”.  “The black was running through the settling dust to intercept what appeared to be a small white butterfly that had been blown high into the air.  It fell on a clump of salt-bush.  He picked it off with great care”.  (Between pages 40 and 41 is a colour plate, of an Aborigine picking a piece of paper from a plant.  On the rear of the plate is the caption “He picked it off with great care (see page 45)”.  It is a paper wrapping from a tooth-pick marked “Favor-Paris.  Cure-Dents Sterilise.  Hotel de Paris.  M.C.”  Joe also finds a greenish-grey button from the cuff of a man’s jacket.  “You’re doing fine, Joe,” “Biggles told the black”.  “Biggles took the mine manager and his black boy back to Barula Creek, and stopping there only long enough for a cup of tea, took off again and headed north”.  Ginger says he thinks the wheel track was made by a D.C.3 fitted with a tricycle undercart.  Landing at Darwin, Ginger sees a small brownish-green aircraft that answers to Brand’s description of the newspaper man’s plane.  They make enquiries with a flight officer named West and discover the plane, an Aeronca, belongs to Len Holmes.  Speaking with Holmes, they confirm he hired it out to a newspaper man called Canton, who rolled up on a motorbike.  Canton was the name on his B licence, which was issued in 1939.  Biggles tells Holmes that Canton flew to Barula Creek, but the mystery is that he returned with his tanks half full.  Biggles guesses there was another aircraft around that day and West remembers seeing a D.C.3 flying over without calling.  Biggles asks West and Holmes to cable him at Scotland Yard if they see either Canton or the D.C.3 again.  Biggles confides to Ginger and Bertie that he suspects the D.C.3 landed, unloaded a motorbike, which Canton then rode to the airport to hire the plane.  He flew to the mine and got the information, then returned, refuelling at the D.C.3 on the way.  They then moved to the place decided on the for ambush, carried out the robbery, loaded the gold up and flew away.  Biggles says they have learned a lot more than they expected and tomorrow they will “push along home as fast as we can to see if there are any developments there”.